The Cross of Death
by Awesome.German
Summary: Life gets hard when the officers of two Soviet snipers turn on them and reveal a number of things hidden by the Soviet Military.
1. Enter sniper team A

October 10th, 1942

Stalingrad, Soviet Union

Sector Five: The Rail yard

I blinked away the sleepiness in my eyes and peered down my scope again. I estimated the distance between my position and the trenches across the way was about 350 meters. Properly adjusting my scope, I began to scan the area for targets. I'd been in the rail yard for about two hours, and couldn't find any targets. I moved to a new spot because my old one was very limited in view. I now had a much wider target area. I checked my watch; 0847. _The krauts should be up and moving now…I wonder why they aren't…_ I thought. Just then, a flash of gray whipped past my crosshairs. I focused again and followed the gray along the trench. It stopped about twenty meters away from the edge of my killing zone. I focused on the helmet and exhaled. Just one shot, and he'd be dead…

"Any action Vasili?" My spotter, Andrei Aleksandrov, whispered loudly in my ear. I jumped, accidentally pulling the trigger. I shot him a mean look and quickly did the bolt on my rifle. I still had enough time to shoot again before the report reached them, or so I thought. Just as I pulled the trigger and watched the Nazi fall, machine gun bullets tore up the debris around me. I stood up and tried to sprint to the rear on instinct, but Aleksandrov stayed right where he was and laid lead into the Germans on the other side of the rail yard. I felt a sharp pain in my lower right leg and collapsed. The last thing I saw was Aleksandrov's face before I blacked out.

I woke up in a hospital bed with my left arm and right leg in bandages. Aleksandrov walked over to me.

"How are you feeling?" He asked kindly.

"Like I got shot twice and only know about getting shot once." I replied sharply. His eyes lowered.

"I'm sorry about that…I ..uh…kinda used you for a human shield and you got hit in the arm…" Without warning, my left hand connected with his cheek, and a horrible pain surged throughout my arm. I cried out in agony at my stupidity. Once the pain had calmed I spoke to him.

"So you almost got me killed twice today. Are you honestly trying to kill me, or are you just that stupid?" I asked. He apologized once more. The nurse came over and shoed him away so she could check my leg.

After a few minutes of examination, she concluded that my leg was fine and that I'd be back in action in two or three days tops. My arm was just a skim, so it was fine. I breathed a sigh of relief and tried to get back to sleep.

October 14th, 1942.

Stalingrad, Soviet Union.

Sector Four: Lazur Chemical Plant.

"Aleksandrov!" I whispered, lightly hitting him on the chest to wake him up. "I found one. Grab your rifle." Doing as he was told, he took his spot in the firing slit. I focused my periscope slightly more. "Twenty meters to your left, Officer doing rounds outside the plant. Range: about 400 meters." Aleksandrov's left hand did the adjustments to his scope, his right hand on the rifle ready to fire at any moment. "Do you see him?" Aleksandrov nodded; I smirked. He was in the zone. _Wait until he stops moving…_ I thought. I watched the officer closely, waiting for him to stop walking. He finished inspecting the man in front of him, and they both saluted. Before I could even give the order to fire, I saw a bullet pass through the German's skull. Aleksandrov undid the bolt quickly, picked up the shell casing, and began to count to sixty under his breath. I had already grabbed my rifle, and was scanning the area around the officer. I suddenly noticed something glimmering in one of the windows of the plant. Inspecting closer, I saw it was a pair of binoculars staring right back at me. He reached for his radio and took one moment to look away. I aimed directly where his head would be in a moment. It slid easily into my crosshairs, too easily in fact. I pulled the trigger. _Click! _My rifle had jammed. Panic overtook me as I undid the bolt and began to un jam my rifle. My periscope was still set up and I looked into it for a second. Suddenly, Aleksandrov's rifle fired once again next to my ear. The radio was shot from the Nazi's hand. He ran back to get it, but left his binoculars on the windowsill. The radio must have been broken, but oh well. Once my rifle was working again, I aimed where his binoculars were. A hand reached out to grab them, and Aleksandrov fired again. The recoil from the shot knocked him into the air for a slight moment, and I caught just enough of his helmet to fire. Blood and brains splattered all over the wall behind him, and his helmet flew off his head and landed on the ground below.

"Vasili, we need to get out of here. Now." Aleksandrov pointed out. I grabbed my shell casings and stuffed my rifle inside its bag. "I'll take point." He said. We slowly crawled back to the snipers bunker, covering only about twenty of the hundred or so meters in a half hour.

Once there we pulled out our respective sniper journals, wrote down the kills, signed each others as 'spotter', and went to the mess hall to get some grub. The night went as usual. We flirted with the female sniper, Anna, spoke of our kills with Pavlo, the laid back sniper, and discussed sniper tactics with the oldest sniper, Nikolai. Afterwards we went back to the bunker to get some rest; we were leaving early tomorrow to nail a few Germans stupid enough to go stumbling around at night.

I was having a lovely dream that night, until I was shaken awake.

"Comrades Vasili Vasilev and Andrei Aleksandrov, correct?" spoke a soft voice in the darkness.

"Yes." We both replied.

"I'm going to need you to come with me, Colonel Mikhail Vidikov would like a word with you two immediately." We stood up, got our rifles, and followed the commissar to Comrade Vidikov's office.


	2. Complications

October 15th, 1942

Stalingrad, Soviet Union

Soviet Headquarters

"Come in Comrades." A voice beckoned from behind the curtain in the doorway. I pushed the curtain away and walked up to the desk. Aleksandrov and I stopped, came to attention, saluted, and sat in the two chairs in front of the old desk. "Good evening Comrades. I am colonel Mikhail Vidikov. It has come to my attention that, using teamwork, you two have over four-hundred kills. Because you men are so good, I have a mission for you. We need someone of your caliber, because any normal sniper could, and probably would fail." I gulped, wondering what this important mission was. Vidikov walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a map. Vidikov was a short man; bald and fat. He looked like a penguin while walking. Sitting down, he unrolled the map and pointed quite deep into German lines. "We have reliable information stating that tomorrow one of the German intelligence officers, Major Iro Henle, will be stopping by this headquarters to deliver a speech to the men and surveying the moral of the men." I want you two to crawl into a spot where you can see this factory well and get rid of Iro. You two will both be issued new rifles which you'll be able to test out today. These rifles have been equipped with captured Fascist Zeiss 6 power scopes. Understood?" He finished, standing up straight.

"Yes, Comrade Commissar." We both replied.

"Excellent. You all may now head back to your bunker, that's where your rifles and a map of the factory and it's surrounding area will be waiting. Dismissed." We stood up, saluted sharply, and headed back to our bunker.

October 15th, 1942

Stalingrad, Soviet Union

Soviet Sniper Bunker.

The sharp crack of my rifle filled the air in the bunker. _Ping!_ 550 meters away, the bullet impacted directly on the destroyed panzer's barrel. I did the bolt on my rifle and waited for Aleksandrov to chose a target.

"The machine gun on top of the destroyed T-34, 50 meters farther and 20 to the left of the destroyed Panzer." He told me.

"Got it." I replied. "It's a downhill shot, add 1/8 to compensate." _Click. _I licked my finger and put it out in the air. "Wind is at half-value." _Click, click. _"Fire when ready." A few moments later, Aleksandrov pulled the trigger. We kept our eyes glued to our scopes, not moving from the machine gun. A flash of yellow on the gun told me he had hit his mark. "Hit." I said smoothly. I checked my watch again. 1045. "We'd better get going, this place is pretty deep in the lines. Aleksandrov nodded and gathered his stuff. I did the same, and we went into the back room to change into our suits and get the grease pot for our faces.

October 15th, 1942.

Stalingrad, Soviet Union.

One Kilometer Behind German Lines.

1534

"Vasili!" Aleksadrov whispered. "How much farther?" He asked. I scanned the area for a minute to make sure no Germans were around. I pulled out the map slowly and calculated where we would be around now.

"One kilometer left." I told him. Putting the map away I noticed the ground suddenly start to shake. I pulled out my binoculars and looked around the area. _Okay…There's a roadblock up ahead and on the right side of the road…What's on the left…_Suddenly, a large barrel popped into my sight. I froze. It was a column of tanks. "Aleksandrov!" I said hurriedly. "There's a column of Panzers heading this way!" His eyes widened. He looked around and realized the same thing I did; there was no cover around, just the bits of rubble in the road. "Get directly behind me, and lay your head into the ground!" I shouted over the roar of the tanks which had now turned and were heading straight for us. My heart beat faster than it ever had before as the tanks approached.


End file.
